Development of biosphere assessment methodology in view of surface and near-surface environment

Itazu, Toru; Inagaki, Manabu; Kato, Tomoko ; Suzuki, Yuji*; Oyamada, Kiyoshi*; Ebashi, Takeshi; Kawamura, Makoto; Ebina, Takanori*; Miyahara, Kaname  

The project of high-level radioactive waste disposal is in the stage of site selection in Japan, and the site-specific performance assessment using the methodology of site-generic study has been developed after the publication of the second progress report (H12). In the same way, biosphere assessment using the behavior of radionuclides, which depends on the site-specific condition, has been started. In this paper, the following issues have been addressed. (1) Survey of the foreign literature relating to the surface and near- surface hydrology for biosphere assessments. (2) Survey of the domestic literature of flow and transport in subsurface systems valuable for biosphere assessments. (3) Trial of transport analysis in surface and near-surface environment of the model site. (4) The setting and boundary conditions of model used for the surface and near-surface hydrological analysis. About the fist issue, from literature of Sweden, we studied the calculation of the dose with account to radionuclides migration in the Quaternary. Concerning the second item, collecting and compiling the useful information for the surface and near-surface hydrological analysis from literature related to groundwater flow and pollution survey in Japan, we learned about the environmental tracer method and so on. Concerning the third point, transport analysis in surface and near-surface environment using site-specific data for sensitivity analysis after this has been carried out to check out the influence of some parameters on transport phenomena, and the relative high sensitivity of the difference of the source positions were shown. Concerning the fourth item, we examined the setting and the boundary conditions of model whose outputs include groundwater flow and transport rate into river, lake, sea. These outputs are used as inputs of biosphere assessment model.